Turkcell ups M2M forecast
The Turkish government has enacted law to exempt M2M SIMs from a tax levied on any new SIM subscription.
Currently, Turkish mobile customers pay TRY37 (€16.7) as a fixed tax on a new SIM connection, but businesses and service providers installing M2M SIMs will now be exempted from the levy.
Turkcell, which recently announced the launch of an M2M platform, said that the change would speed up M2M market growth.
Chief Corporate Business Officer Selen Kocabas said, There are potentially around 150 million remote devices in the Turkish market, and this latest legal amendment marks a crucial step. The lightening of customers’ taxation burden will ensure increased revenues for the Treasury."
Turkcell operator likes to present M2M in terms of "savings" to the Turkish economy – through measures such as reducing electricity and energy revenue leakage, smart building and industry solutions and telematics. It claims that its M2M solutions "contributed" TRY318 million (€143.4 million) to the Turkish economy through savings in 2011. Originally the operator planned to double that amount in 2012, but it now says that due to the tax change it expects to treble that number, "saving" the Turkish economy TRY1 billion ( €450 million) over the course of 2012.
Kocabas said the operator now expected to have 1.2 million M2M SIMs deployed this year: the operator said in March 2012 that it had 750,000 M2M SIMs under management.